By skyforbes 
Let’s talk tech. (My favourite!)
Fair warning: don’t marry the first platform just because your friend’s sister’s copywriter uses it.
You’ve got to find a system that fits you—your brain, your flow, and your service.
There are so many out there, it can be hard to know which tool to use that’s right for you.
It’s also important to remember that different tools are better for certain things, and often we try to force everything into one tool, when it might be better to use a couple of tools together, but make them talk to each other with automations.
Let’s compare a few:
Notion
A popular choice for entrepreneurs who love a flexible setup. You can build databases, templates, and custom dashboards all in one place. Notion is great for combining notes, tasks, and wikis, but it can take time to set up properly and may require some upfront tinkering.
Dubsado or HoneyBook
These are client-facing CRMs built for creatives. Contracts, proposals, workflows—lots of snazzy front-end automation. But, sometimes, the user experience on the backend isn’t flexible enough. If you need full control over project stages, they can feel limited. These are great for those documents to be sent automatically.
Airtable
It’s brilliant if you’re a visual thinker. Spreadsheets meet databases. You can build totally custom views & automations to suit your needs – showing just what you want. Deadlines, client names, statuses. Need a simple dashboard? Done. Want a central call note taker view. Easy. It’s flexible, but can get overwhelming if you don’t love starting from scratch. (And my personal recommendation now)
ClickUp
Perfect if you want to break down your client projects into bitesized pieces. ClickUp is great for structure and managing tasks and project. You can create Client CRM type views but it’s not the best tool for that specific job in my opinion even though it can be done. You get list views, timelines, priorities, and great automation. A little steeper to set up, but fab once it’s going. It’s ideal if your process is task-heavy or you want to assign comments/reminders.
Google Drive
Old faithful. If you mainly deal with docs, Drive works—but only if you create a clear folder/labeling system. Otherwise, it turns into a digital sock drawer. Everything’s somewhere but no one knows where. Google Drive is your simple place to start if you don’t need much, e.g. document storing and sharing with clients, but don’t need a dashboard view. Or to use with one of the others.